Billy Graham's introduction to Korea in 1952
came as a result of written appeals of American military chaplains whose
troops were finally engaged in combat with Communists in what President Harry
Truman described as a "United Nations Peace Action."

Wheels turned, and in December 1952, as guest of
the Pentagon and Supreme Allied Commander General Mark Clark, Billy toured
the hospitals and MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units of South Korea.
Grady Wilson and Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, accompanied him as
they visited the tragic victims of the "peace action."

It was Billy's first exposure to the grisly realities
of modern warfare. He prayed with men without eyes and limbs, with gaping
wounds and charred skin. In his book Count It All Joy, Grady Wilson has left
us an account of one unforgettable scene:

They had helicoptered in a young soldier who had been machine-gunned
in the back. He was permanently paralyzed and was lying facedown on a canvas
rigging in a MASH unit of the Tenth Corps. Billy had spoken briefly over
a PA system, and when he stopped by this patient, he heard him say gasping,
"Mr. Graham, I heard your message. I want to tell you

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that even though I can't move, it's worth being machine gunned
to open my heart to Jesus Christ. This day I have accepted Jesus Christ as
my Savior."

Then the soldier added, "Mr. Graham, I would like
to see your face."

Billy obligingly got down and lay on his back alongside
so the young man could have eye contact with him. A tear fell on Billy's
face. Billy also was fighting tears as he softly talked and prayed with a
young man whom he will one day meet again.

Coming into South Korea two decades later in the
spring of 1973, we found it all so different. Seoul, the capital, was now
a beautiful rebuilt city. It seemed to many of us on the Billy Graham team
that we were coming into God's country. We found Christians rising at 4
A.M. and going to an hour's service of holy worship in a church
before leaving for their workplace. In Seoul we found the largest Presbyterian
church in the whole world, the largest Methodist church in the world, and
the largest Assemblies of God church in the world, with over a million members.
Here also we found a love for the Lord Jesus Christ that reminded us of the
way the people of Asia received the Gospel from the apostle Paul and his
teammates in New Testament times.

After months of preaching efforts by his team in
all of South Korea's major cities, Billy spent a week proclaiming Christ
to hundreds of thousands of Koreans on Yo-ido Plaza outside Seoul. The amazing
climax came on Sunday afternoon, June 3, when Billy addressed 1,100,000 people
who had come (mostly on foot) to the Plaza. He told the vast assemblage,
"This has been the greatest experience of my life."

Billy also did something for which I have always
honored him. It was a small thing really. Before the service began, much
to our surprise, Billy invited each member of his team to step up to the
platform and be photographed next to him with that record-breaking crowd
in the background.

Such a minor happening hardly needs to be mentioned,
you

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might say. Yet that is precisely why I mention it. Naturally we
were charmed. I look at the picture of Billy and myself every day. It reminds
me of Grady Wilson's war story because it tells me of what quality stuff
Billy Graham is made.

When the crusade opened on Yo-ido Island, the American
ambassador was present. So was Dr. Kyung Chik Han, the great Christian statesman
and pastor emeritus of Young Nak Church in Seoul. So was Dr. Paul Yonggi
Cho, pastor of the world's largest church in Seoul. So were 11,000 trained
counselors, 3,608 pastors, and an audience half a mile long. All those people
were ready and eager seemingly for Billy to show them how to enter the kingdom
of

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God. All the program formalities and the protocol of a public event
in a foreign country were about to begin.

For weeks all of us on the team had labored hard
on Korean soil, and the response to the gospel message was fabulous. In Pusan
Grady Wilson preached to 326,000 people, including 60,000 school children
on a Saturday afternoon. In Chonju Howard Jones preached to 270,000 and spoke
by invitation at a Buddhist seminary. In Taejon Akbar Abdul-Haqq spoke to
83,500. John Wesley White spoke to 140,000 in Taegu. Cliff Barrows spoke
to 37,000 in Choon Chun. Ralph Bell spoke to 320,000 in a ball park in Kwangju.
Other members of the team included musician George Beverly Shea, Tedd Smith,
John Innes, Henry Holley (the crusade director, who in the nineties is still
ministering in Korea), Don Bailey, Lee Fisher, Steve Musto, Ted Cornell,
Billy Fasig, Tom Bledsoe, Randall Veazey, and even myself.

I was escorted to Inchon one day to evangelize the
republic of Korea troops and to enjoy tea with His Excellency, the general.
What an honor to preach Christ to those men through an interpreter! I remember
it well because after I spoke, a senior officer loudly reprimanded the ROK
chaplains then busily circulating among those who had come down front at
the invitation. The chaplains were getting names and serial numbers for their
spiritual follow-up!

The evangelist's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, was also
present and addressed thousands of women in a meeting at Seoul's Ewha University.
As a thirteen-year-old daughter of missionary parents, Ruth Bell had attended
a Christian high school in Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. At the time
of our crusade in 1973, the Pyongyang Communist government conducted a campaign
of vilification against her husband, calling him "the sorcerer from America"
who had come to South Korea to "practice fanatic exorcism and spread
superstition."2 More recently, however, Dr. and
Mrs. Graham have been invited guests of the government in Pyongyang and have
been graciously treated. As a gesture of love, the Grahams have donated a
clinic-on-wheels for treating the children of North Korea.

One of my unforgettable recollections was on Friday
evening at the Plaza when the worship leaders invited the people to pray.
Can

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you imagine the sound of 600,000 voices all offering different
prayers to God at the same time? It was incredible, and yet I'm sure they
were all duly noted in heaven.

Yes, to us who were there in Korea in 1973, the crusade
is a wonderful memory. For myself something special was added. My late wife,
Winola, and I for many years had supported a Korean orphan under the World
Vision program started by founder Bob Pierce. When I arrived in Seoul, the
World Vision representative brought my sponsored "daughter," Choon Hee, from
her coastal home, where she was a kindergarten teacher, to visit me. So for
four brief, joyful days of my life, I had a daughter of my own. Of course
it was Korea, and we could only communicate by signs and interpreters, and
we have lost touch since, but still  four days!

2 According to my friend Rev. Billy Kim, these
characterizations of Billy Graham appeared in the North Korean press and
were reprinted in South Korean newspapers. Cf. John Pollock, Billy Graham,
Evangelist to the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 66. At this
writing Nelson Edman (Ned) Graham, younger son of Billy and Ruth, is sending
relief goods to North Korea as part of the outreach of East Gates
Ministries.